by Winthrop E. Sullivan III
I have recently been jolted back to a recurring realization – that the concept of “belief” is a driving force in our lives – collectively speaking. I had heretofore been less aware of the importance of belief because my training as a scientist taught me that beliefs are irrelevant to what is actually the truth of a matter. Believing or not believing in something does nothing to change its truth or falsity. One cannot by obtaining a majority opinion on a subject of fact change its nature or alter its veracity. The earth revolved around the sun for billions of years and continues to do so even though human awareness and collective acknowledgment of this fact is relatively recent.
A few years ago, I had an alarming encounter with belief when listening to an NPR piece which included a statement about “scientists who believe in evolution”. Scientists (myself included) almost without exception “believe” in evolution but not one of us would think that what we personally believe matters. We believe in evolution because there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to support it. Period.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection provides a very compelling model for how species evolve and Darwin himself was cautious and compiled a great deal of evidence to support his idea before he even dared to publish it – he was almost scooped because of this caution. His analysis of the Galapagos Finches is classic example of adaptation and speciation and has stood the test of time. The fossil record, which continues to be expanded upon, observations of the evolution of bacterial resistance to antibiotics and what we have learned about genetic mechanisms – starting with Mendel and especially about DNA – to name but a few – are definitive evidence to us.
From traditional Linnean classification work, we have a very detailed “family tree” of current and extinct species. The DNA evidence which looks at differences in the DNA sequence of genes – where mutations which tend to affect large portions of the DNA that do not directly code for proteins (and whose function is still unclear) pile up over time. We have no trouble with the concept that our own DNA is unique – juries now trust DNA evidence as definitive proof of guilt or innocence. Yet some find it hard to believe that the same DNA evidence is the most definitive verification yet of Darwins theory of evolution because it shows that the degree of similarity between the DNA of different species exactly matches their relatedness as measured by other methods. “Was Darwin Wrong?” as a recent cover of National Graphic magazine asked. Their answer was two letters, all in caps, that took up the entire opening page of the article: “NO”.
Critics of evolution point to missing evidence as proof that the theory of evolution is wrong. “They haven’t found the missing link”. Yet scientists don’t see this as a serious objection – or really don’t see it as an objection at all – because absence of evidence does not equate to evidence of absence.
Popular belief in extraterrestrial aliens or monsters like Sasquatch, Yeti or the Jersey Devil persist without definitive evidence. Many scientists may not believe in these things but they wouldn’t state as fact that they don’t exist just because we have no definitive evidence that they do. The Giant Squid was a member of this mythical monster fraternity until recent physical and video evidence of a living Giant Squid was acquired. So belief in this case has been transformed to certainty by the acquisition of several lines of irrefutable evidence – i.e. a Sasquatch carcass would be a good find – surely they are not immortal?
As far as the “missing link” is concerned, there are several candidates among the vast number of hominid fossils that have been found, but which one is an ancestor both to us and to Chimpanzees (our closest relative among Apes or Primates – not Monkeys please) has not been unequivocally determined – and yes, may yet to be discovered as would be proof of extraterrestrial aliens or The Abominable Snowman.
So I have now identified myself as one for whom belief is a) personal, b) of little importance (except to me) and c) subject to change as I learn more about the world – i.e. possibly temporary. The encounters I have experienced led me to realize something that I have known intuitively for a long time but had not self-articulated – that there is another camp that feels very differently. For this camp, belief is very important. It defines who you are, your strength of character and your moral bearings. Science has become to this group just another set of beliefs.
I discovered this in conversations in which I would attempt to describe the evidentiary basis for my opinions expecting to end the argument with facts, and the response was “well that’s what you believe” – as if they agree with me that belief is personal, but also imply that evidence is not important, but belief is. That I base my beliefs on evidence doesn’t matter to them– what I believe does and since everybody is entitled to their own beliefs, how we choose to arrive at them is our own business. In other words, its OK to believe what you want. On most of these points, I would heartily agree – belief is a choice and everybody has the right to form their own opinions. I would even agree that the the manner in which you arrive at your beliefs is a personal choice too.
These admissions would not get me into too much trouble with members of my own tribe – because we don’t place much importance on beliefs anyway – but they do matter even in this group because they shape our biases. We all as humans want what we believe to be true and resist evidence or arguments to the contrary – especially when the theory in question is our own. This sometimes causes science to falter and stumble as powerful members of the tribe resist new ideas. We argue a lot and challenge others ideas and defend our own – even when the evidence in our favor is weak. But we see strongly held opinions as weakness not strength – we place our trust in a process that is self-correcting – as long as we keep questioning the conventional wisdom and testing our hypotheses we will eventually get it right – and maybe not even in our own lifetime. One famous scientist once said that new theories don’t displace old ones because of evidence or reason, they replace old ones because the adherents to the old ideas retire or die.
So what we really have are two value systems. This is what is referred to as “belief systems” – obviously not a new observation on my part but one that I now understand better from personal experience. The belief system to which I adhere to is the newer of the two – forged in the Renaissance and first clearly articulated by philosophers such as Rene DesCartes and Immanuel Kant. It stresses reason as a basic means for understanding the world – beliefs in this system are derived from the application of reason rather than the reverse. Radical then, commonplace now – or is it? The older belief system – based on belief in a deity – is of course an ancient one for our species, but some of my experiences suggest to me that this reversal of “reason before belief” occurs in areas that transcend religion.
One example of what I have seen is what I call the “Cult of Tesla” in which the ideas and speculations of the brilliant scientist and engineer Nicola Tesla are revered in a way that borders on religious fervor. Tesla obviously was a brilliant scientist and inventor – we owe much to his inventions of radio and AC power generation – our modern world could not exist without these contributions. Thomas Edison also made many important contributions, but in a head-to-head, high-stakes competition with his former protégé – Tesla emerged victorious – and has recently been given the nod as the inventor of radio – reversing generations of misinformation that falsely attributed this invention to Enrico Marconi.
So yes, Tesla was brilliant and his work significant – but it doesn’t stop there. His experiments with wireless power transmission foresaw our modern network of cell phone towers even though we have yet to harness the power of lightning as Tesla wanted to do.
Beyond this, we enter the world of the bizarre and the mythological – Tesla was supposed to have invented cloaking technology that was capable rendering entire ships invisible. He even discovered a satellite circling the globe that is not natural and has been orbiting the earth for 10,000 years. His research was so powerful and sensitive that after he died, the US Government collected all of his papers and sent them to top, top secret research facilities like Area 51. (Ah government secrecy – a black hole in our understanding of the world where all sorts of devious and ingenious things can hatch out) Hollywood of course loves this black hole – in one recent film Tesla is credited with inventing a way of both duplicating and transporting any object – including living ones – a human fax machine used by Hugh Jackman’s character in The Prestige. But I should stop at fantasy – or should I? Lines get blurred in this context …
So now you have a person who trained as a scientist at the center of a belief system – one in which if Tesla said it or is reported to have said it – then it must be true (like anything on the Internet of course). The Black Knight satellite is one such example. I encountered this belief from a young friend about this 10,000 year old satellite that Tesla discovered that was placed into orbit by aliens (obviously, we, even the Incas or Mayans, didn’t have the technical capability to do this back then – but oh, right, the Incas too had to have been assisted in creating their incredible architecture by space aliens).
So curious, I did some Googling on this and came across a very interesting article on the subject (1) . The article’s author attempts to make an objective analysis of the evidence for this object, that it exists, that it is artificial (i.e. not natural) and that is is 10,000 years old. The author’s conclusion was that this story is probably false. However, what was more interesting than the article itself was the discussion thread that followed it. Therein ensued a clash between these two belief systems – and the notion that adherents to the scientific method are just believers too – that they follow the teachings of science with blind faith just as any other group with a common set of beliefs does. A comment from a participant named Mack illustrates this point of view:
“Why are schools and educators keep us blind with their conventional and outdated knowledge. Monoatomic, bio lasers, PEMFs. Sound Can heal, cure and strengthen us. Can spontaneously generate DNA, can levitate, create energy,travels faster than the speed of light and can affect every Atom of our universe. but they don’t teach that.and I don’t have to give any references for this information, because if you don’t know it already, or you do and are not teaching it, then you’re just another part of the ignorance of our society. Don’t let the teaching authority go to your head.”
If I parse this correctly despite some of the grammatical mistakes, it appears that Mack is saying that sound a) travels faster than the speed of light b) works at the atomic level on every molecule in the universe and c) creates energy and matter (DNA). No, I didn’t know that Mack, interesting idea nonetheless. That sound can levitate I have no doubt – it’s a pressure wave. And finally Mack’s statement that he does not need to supply references (i.e. supporting evidence) for his assertions because asking for this is just a ploy by the “teaching authority” to foster ignorance by dismissing the things that he enumerates or an excuse for not teaching them. There is no equivocation here as scientists would express, Mack simply knows these things.
And another comment from Calum:
“Scientific determinism is nothing but a paid bully in the intellectual landscape of the free thinking world.”
To paraphrase Calum if I may, scientific determinism robs us of intellectual freedom. By disproving some ideas with their so-called experiments, they take all of the fun out of it. But we don’t need to be constrained by their empiricism – we can still believe what we want. Or if it were me, I would just separate fiction from non-fiction – thinking about the physics of Star Trek for example is one of my enduring pleasures.
By far my favorite comment was from James – two excerpts from this comment (check the web reference for the full quote as I do not want to do disservice to James by editorial truncations) are instructive as is the moderators response.
“A simple fact that a satellite was plotted and observed to be moving 2 or 3 times faster than Sputnik and orbiting Earth in the opposite rotation to Earth, unlike any of the few early satellites put into space by the US or Russia, and was observed to be much larger than any know at the time, does not do anything for your integrity with regards to The Black Knight Satellite.”
And:
“However you mix the facts with your opinions, and in my opinion you do it to intentionally to divert the readers attention from the facts themselves.
I mean, let’s face it, Tesla was eccentric. HE WAS ALSO BRILLIANT!”
Note that throughout the discussion thread, the moderator takes pains to ask for references whenever claims of “fact” are made, but several other things stand out from this comment as well. First, James questions the moderators’ integrity and suggests that the author has defamed Tesla by mixing his own opinions with facts and daring to suggest that Tesla’s discovery of an alien satellite is nothing of the sort (Note, I’m not sure where he is going with this – that is what analysis is – maybe he means that what is opinion and what is fact is not made clear by the author – but as I’ll discuss in a bit, one person’s opinion is now another person’s “fact”).
James admits that Tesla was eccentric but stresses (caps are by James, not me) that he was brilliant as if to say that his (Tesla’s) opinions are to be trusted because of his universally acknowledged genius. (Tesla is – in my opinion – an example of a rather common phenomenon in which genius and eccentricity tend to coexist in the same cerebral cortex.)
The moderator then attempts to respond in an objective way (in my opinion):
“Dear James, thanks for your comments. I’ll try to respond to as much as I can.
Tesla was a brilliant scientist. Thirty years ago I would say he deserved to be better known. Today he is famous but it is sad he is best-known for the ludicrous personality cult created around him and not for his contributions to science.
‘A simple fact that a satellite was plotted and observed to be moving 2 or 3 times faster than Sputnik’
How does that fit in with orbital dynamics? That’s greater than earth’s escape velocity!”
The one misstep here is to say “the ludicrous personality cult created around him” – a fit of pique that mars an otherwise restrained and what I found to be objective response to the commenters.
I do not question the statement – I agree with it – but I do question the tactics. This was a rare instance by the moderator but was a very common tactic of the article’s critics – to preface statements about an opponent’s view as “ridiculous” or “moronic” – as if to say that anyone that believes them must also be a moron or worse. The point made about escape velocity would make me very leery of letting James behind the wheel of my car – the physics of orbital mechanics also apply when rounding a curve at high speed – we can thank Sir Isaac Newton for this insight.
Belief systems seem invariably to come from contemplation of the unknown. Whether it be God, space aliens, or conspiracy theories, questions that can’t be answered with known facts are filled in with convenient answers that becomes beliefs. “How could life have started from non-life?”, “How could the ancient Egyptians (or Mayans or Incas or Eastern Islanders etc) have built these monuments without modern technology?”, “How could World Trade 7 have fallen down by itself?” and “How could one man have pulled off the assassination of John Kennedy?”
The explanations that we derive to answer these questions become beliefs to some because they make sense. Or is it that the concept of not knowing something is frightening and therefore needs an explanation so that we can be at peace with it? Once we have some explanation that we can wrap our heads around (even if that means ignoring other questions that our answer raises), we take it to heart. The second explanation may be why beliefs are strongly defended – the inability to be at peace with not knowing requires a vigorous defense against attempts to drag us back into that abyss of confusion.
The more people that share our belief, the better we feel because we assume that they have gone through the same personal journey and arrived at the same destination. Our species is a communal species – probably a main reason for its survival and current prosperity – we derive strength from common resolve.
The scientific camp has different sensibilities in this respect. We too want to understand how the universe works but we are comfortable with not knowing all the answers. We also don’t go after the big questions first, we take it step by step, chipping off problems that we can attack with hypothesis and experiment. We assume that if we keep this up (collectively speaking and over the course of a timespan that will exceed our own lifetimes), the bigger questions will eventually fall to our axe. These cracks in our understanding – that we readily admit to because that is where the interesting questions are – provide an opportunity to the belief oriented, at least as far as they are concerned. “But they admit that they don’t know!”
We are even careful to hedge our bets even when we pretty much know but haven’t answered all of the questions yet. We call our ideas “Theories” – but let me clear up some popular confusion on these terms for a moment – just because something is labeled a “Theory” does not mean that it is untested.
In fact the famous Theory that I began with has more evidence in favor of it than just about any theory out there but we don’t call it a “Law” as if to cement our affirmation. We made this mistake with Newton’s Laws of Motion. They work well at low speeds but lose predictive accuracy at high velocities approaching the speed of light. Newton’s and Kepler’s gravitational equations do a pretty good job but fail to precisely predict things like the orbit of Mercury. These have been suplanted by Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and his General Theory which does a far better job of predicting planetary orbits but also makes a startling assertion – that gravity bends space. This one weirds us out but has been entirely confirmed by experiments with Solar eclipses where we can actually see that star light bends around the Sun just as predicted by Einsteins equations.
The Special Theory is also mind-boggling – it tells us that as things go faster, time in their reference frame goes slower and their measurement of distance shrinks. These too have been verified by experiment – in fact the GPS in your phone or car wouldn’t work correctly if compensations for Einstein’s Special Theory were not added by the software. But despite this definitive evidence, we don’t call them Einstein’s Laws. Its like judges in a sporting competition – they are loath to give out 10’s especially early in the competition because what do they do then if somebody else comes along and does it better? There is no score of 10.2. Or maybe we just want job security – if all the questions are answered, we are left without meaningful work to do. Whatever the reason, we leave ourselves some wiggle room even though we may personally regard these theories as facts.
But this equivocation gives an opportunity to the believers. They say, “but its just a theory” – equating theory with idea or speculation and ignoring – or being (blissfully?) ignorant of – the evidence for it. To a scientist, there are theories and then there are Theories – not all theories are created equal and not all have stood up to repeated experimental scrutiny. But because we are loath to promote the ones we have more or less proven to “Fact”, (see – I can’t go there – I had to put in “more or less” in order to feel comfortable with this sentence) we provide a gap that the believers try to drive a wedge through.
The words “fact” and “theory” are also of interest in the conversational tactics one observes nowadays. People use the word “fact” (as James did above) as if to say that this is something that is known to be true so you can’t argue the point – it’s a Fact. I don’t have to justify it or give you any stinkin’ references. “Theory” as I have said is used to suggest that its just an idea like any other one so I don’t have to believe it. True, but that is a popular definition of the term, not one that scientists would use.
Theories remain current in science either because they are too new to have been fairly tested or have been and have so far survived the empirical onslaught. The job of a scientist is to constantly challenge conventional wisdom – to challenge even accepted theories with experiments or with new ideas – that is how science moves forward. But this open mindedness leaves us vulnerable to these attacks by outsiders because part of us agrees with their sentiment – yes its just a theory but …
We also argue with each other a lot. Again, this is how science works – disagreement gives way to challenge which leads to advancement – new ideas replace old ones because they survive tests just as Darwin’s theory of natural selection has. And again, this dissent is seen as a weakness by the opponents of Science. “They can’t even agree on it.” In my personal philosophy though, disagreement is a very important stimulus to learning – I can’t learn anything from someone who agrees with me about everything – its like talking to myself. Another part of my philosophy is being able to be wrong and to say “I don’t know”. As Carl Sagan wrote, scientists need to be simultaneously open minded and skeptical – we accept (or should) any possibility but test everything as thoroughly as we can.
Believers prefer “yes” or “no” – you either believe it or you don’t. Scientists are much more comfortable with “maybe” – although we are not comfortable with the ambiguity of this word, so we prefer shades of maybe like “not very likely”, “possible”, “highly probable” or “almost certainly”. Scientists think in terms of real numbers in the mathematical sense – the ones with a decimal point – which in the realm of probability is a scale from 0.0 to 1.0. Believers prefer to think in integer terms on this scale – 0 or 1. They do this by mental emphasis on positive or negative outcomes (depending on their place on the pessimist/optimist scale). So even though they know that chances of success in a lottery are very small, they give huge amounts of money to governments – even if they loath the concept of taxation – because the chance that they could win is not zero – it’s one. All we have to do is not think about “could”.
Some economists call lotteries a regressive tax, meaning that it taxes people with lots of dreams but not much money. Andy Rooney went so far as to call it a “tax on the dumb”. Sure it’s a thrill to have 10 tickets to the 300 Million dollar Power-Ball drawing and throw a party in which everybody fantasizes on how they will spend the money – especially if they collectively bought a large pool of tickets so everybody gets 20 Mil or so. Lots of drinking at these parties no doubt and presumably more after the drawing is made – so cool, its entertainment and camradare – nothing wrong with that. And if you do win, the government takes a large chunk back in taxes so they like The House always have the last laugh.
There are other forms of what I call “binary thinking”. In arguments, many points may be raised on both sides but some seem to resonate more than others, so that personal decisions can be made in many cases – for or against – based on a single pro or con. There is no multi variate factoring – I agree with this point and that issue is important to me so I’ll go with it (even if it is improbable), or with the “cons” – I am very concerned about this aspect so I don’t want anything to do with the whole thing no matter what the benefits may be. Binary thinkers have in my opinion a simplified world view in which things can most often be thought of in black and white terms. Analysts prefer to think in shades of grey. But lest I fall into my own trap, I like to divide the world into two types of people, those that divide the world into two types of people and those that don’t. Binary Thinking! I am also a computer scientist, so binary thinking is a way of life for me in a sense.
So given all this, how then can we explain the Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson? On the one hand, Dr. Carson is a “brilliant” medical doctor – a neurosurgeon no less, trained in the biomedical sciences – the noble tradition of Lister, Jenner, Salk and DeBakey, who rose to the top of his profession as head of neurosurgery at one of the top Medical Schools in the world – Johns Hopkins University – and is thus well acquainted with the arts of reason and the importance of evidence.
On the other hand, he is a deeply religious man – a devout believer. I would have no problem whatsoever if it stopped there – there are many people with a similar resume whom I admire and respect – I think that the current Pope is one of these men. However, he has chosen to use his position of eminence in the biological sciences to make bombastic, derisive comments about the theory of Evolution and those that agree with it and has backed that up with what he believes to be erudite but are in fact weak and easily refuted objections to the theory.
To paraphrase, Dr. Carson says that the Theory of Evolution is “ridiculous” because it relies on DNA mutations which are most often detrimental. In this he has made two admissions that are critical. First he admits that mutations happen, which means that the DNA in living organisms changes (it doesn’t remain as it was – or as God created it that is – and why would God let this happen? Wasn’t it perfect to start with?) and second, that some of these mutations are beneficial – he said “most”, not “all”. Maybe his training as a scientist forced him to say it this way, but whatever the case, he is right – mutations do cause detrimental effects most of the time. (Whenever Creationists get to the subject of DNA, they are on very shaky ground). Actually, most of the time they do nothing much because they hit on vast stretches of the DNA that don’t code for protein and don’t have a definite regulatory role, or they substitute one DNA base-pair for another that has the same affect on protein generation or function (the amino acid “triplet” code is very redundant). But in the end, mutations that have a beneficial effect are very rare.
So his argument starts with a grain of truth but rapidly deteriorates from there because what Carson does not consider here is the Law of Large Numbers. Mutations can happen every time the DNA replicates as is done both in our own somatic cells and in our reproductive cells (gametes). This replication event occurs many, many times simultaneously in many, many individuals and this process has been happening for billions of years – so the total number of chances that are there for this rare event to happen is a mind-bogglingly huge number. Some acquatic species for example produce millions of gametes just to end up with a few offspring per generation – now that’s selection!! When a rare event has enough throws of the dice, it becomes not only possible but highly likely – commonplace. Just think of it this way. Your chances of winning the Lottery by purchasing a single ticket are very small – almost zero, but if enough tickets are sold, the chance that someone will win approaches certainty. And evolution doesn’t care about the individual – it cares about the population where the mathematical laws of statistics reign supreme.
Ben Carson uses the classic tactics of the bellicose dogmatist – using derogatory language in an attempt to ridicule the opposing view – a tactic amply observable in the discussion thread about the Black Knight Satellite. He does deviate somewhat from the script by trying to make a cogent criticism, and to the uninitiated, these arguments may seem plausible but do not really do any damage to the theory at all. What they do is to bolster the confidence of those that agree with his views – because after all he’s a “brilliant” surgeon (remember Tesla here?) and as a politician, that is what he is really after – he’s preaching to his base. Even though he’s pissing on my group, he is really talking to his own tribe – telling them that he is a staunch advocate for their moral values by taking on the big bad scientific establishment on its own terms. That’s what politicians do. The best ones know that there are some that they can never convince and will even alienate with their comments but what they are really doing is a) cementing the support of their base and b) trying to bring in those on the margins.
But turnabout is fair play, so lets examine the idea that Dr. Carson and his adherents put forward as an explanation for all of the extinct species that have been discovered – the story of Noah and the Flood (even though many species have become extinct over the course of recorded history – i.e. since the flood). To give the Reader’s Digest version, at God’s bidding, Noah and his two sons built an Ark and gathered “every living thing” into it to ride out a Flood that God caused to drown/kill the evil. The Ark was 30 by 50 by 300 cubits. A cubit is the length from your fingertips to your elbow, so in a man of average height that’s about 18 inches or so making the Ark about 16 x 27 x 160 meters. So, how long would it take 3 men with no power tools to build this – harvest and transport the timber, hew out the beams, etc? Then they had to get “every living thing” (or maybe God helped out here by causing the living things to come to them, excepting birds and acquatic things that could survive the flood – but surely many birds would die without food or a place to land … so them too – but what about fresh vs salt water fish? – surely the flood would cause the waters to merge killing some species – did Noah and his sons need to build an acquarium too with proper salinity and temperature controls for each species?) How many living things (species) is that and would they all fit in the space that was provided?
And consider the world view of the writer of this story – (Ben would say God, I say Moses but even that’s debatable). Were Noah and his sons aware of Asia, North and South America, Africa, Australia and Antarctica – New Guniea, the Phillipines, Bora Bora and Easter Island too? And if so, how much time would it take for them to gather up all of those critters and bring them back to the Ark – even if the ones able to travel that far – and over vast stretches of ocean that the Ark was designed to protect them from? Not only that, but they have to get back home (on their own this time?) across these oceans when all of this is over.
And what about climate/habitat on the Ark? Could they provide the necessary conditions on that one boat for creatures from extremely different locations in terms of temperature and humidity to keep them not only alive but healthy enough to get back home when the Flood finally receded? And how did they feed all of these creatures? Did they bring “extra” prey species so that the predators wouldn’t starve? How much plant material would be needed to keep the herbivorous species alive? And oh yeah, what about the plants? Surely many terrestrial species would also be killed so if they weren’t saved too, the plant eating animals would starve in post-diluvean times and plants too are “living things” so they would have had to make a) room and b) be pretty damn good botanists to pull that off. Some trees are pretty damn big and would be a bitch to replant … And what about the effect on the gene pool if every species population was reduced to two individuals?
Needless to say, I could keep going here – it doesn’t take much critical thought to poke major holes in this theory. The answers to all of these questions are pretty predictable though – God just made it work out somehow (see 2) . One thing is obvious however – a flood like that would have caused a mass extinction like we see in the fossil record. But just one. The fossil record contains many of these events. Oh right, the fossil record was put there by God to test our faith. I guess that I have failed on this one. I just hope that if Dr. Carson is elected President, he doesn’t make decisions based on theories like this – that he uses the scientific not the fundamentalist side of his brain.
When we tell our children fantastical stories, we may do so to impart or teach some moral values. Many deeply religious people see these biblical stories in the same way that I do – they are allegories, morality plays, stories told to unsophisticated people for didactic purposes. To take them literally, one has to not look at them too closely (that’s just my opinion of course). We tell our kids about Santa Claus when they are little, but dread the day that they become wise enough to start questioning this story – when we will be forced to admit our many deceptions. And many people of faith would agree with me on these points, it’s the fundamentalist / literalist that obviously don’t and never will.
But like Ben Carson’s rants about evolution, I am also preaching to my base. I know that I can’t change these minds because they basically can’t be changed– if you believe in the literal truth of an ancient text, since that text remains constant, so too must your belief in it. But let me throw in arrogance here – the Judeo-Christian tradition is only one of many religious belief systems. To assert that they have the literal truth and that other religions don’t is extreme hubris of the worst kind. Why would God tell them the truth but lie or just not talk to everybody else? Doesn’t he love all of us? But that is the dark side of religion – it can divide and alienate. One thing that is consistent in other religious traditions though are the moral values that are taught in the creation myths. A kind of ethical/moral convergent evolution. It is here I think that religion shines and can brings out the best in us. So I am not against Religion – I am against intransigent dogmatism and fundamentalist absolutism and the bigotry and violence – and ignorance – that it often engenders.
This world view of religion, in which the inexplicable is explained by supernatural powers, provides a simplification that is comforting, nurturing and stabilizing. It forms communities and forges common purpose that is strengthening and empowering. A collective conceptual cocoon where questions can only lead to doubts and are thus to be avoided. Questioning this common view has traditionally been a dangerous, often suicidal endeavor. It is only recently with the advent of the Enlightment that athiesm is even tolerated. But even with this new open-mindedness towards religious skeptics – this discussion still inspires passion. On one end of the spectrum you have malevolent interchanges in virtual and real reality. On the other, you have terrorism and murders at abortion clinics.
The current prominence of Christianity owes as much (if not more so) to violence and terror as it does to truth and divinely inspired conversions of the free willed. The Spanish conquistadors converted natives with the Bible and the sword. A sort of Darwinian selection in which devout believers of “pagan” religions who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time were simply eliminated. What the Islamic Jihadists are doing today is no worse than some of the things that were done by both sides, Muslim and Christian, during the Crusades. Throw in the chaos of the English Civil War here which was in part a clash inspired by the fear of Protestants that their Stuart monarchs would return the country to Catholicism – and violently so if they were to follow the example of their predecessor, bloody Queen Mary. And what were they killing each other about? Dogma. People were burned at the stake because they wouldn’t submit to the teachings of the other religion, and in this case the Bible that they used – Protestant and Catholic, was the same one – albeit the one used by Protestants had been translated into English (another bone of contention with Rome).
And by bringing politics into the picture by discussing Dr. Carson and his views, I get to another dynamic that truly concerns me about this timeless clash between belief and reason. There is a belief that the Christian biblical text that we know and that Carson believes to be true (down to the last comma) was decided by politicians at Nicaea in AD 325. According to this account, there were lots of sacred texts that didn’t get voted in. Is this because God was able to inspire the committee to correctly discern the wheat from the chaff and make all of the right editorial choices? Or is this too propaganda by non-believers? (As is the maintenance of the Piltdown Man Hoax by creationists as evidence that paleontologists can be duped – yes, but only temporarily.) Careful research on the question seems to point to “yes it’s a myth” – some decisions were made about doctrinal issues (like the divinity of Jesus) and the timing of holidays (which was probably influenced by politics especially the dating of Easter relative to Passover) but there is no evidence that the Council collectively editorialized the Bible, (see 3) despite the fact that this view is expressed in the best-selling book/movie The DaVinci Code. And how many of our beliefs are founded in the world of entertainment not fact?
And if it were true, wouldn’t it be great if God could do that with our Congress, President and Supreme Court? It would save us all a lot of grief. In my experience, committee decisions are almost never optimal. One wag put it that the IQ of a group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group. Don’t know if I agree with this formula but it would mean that collectively speaking, our government is pretty stupid, but also that we as a population are orders of magnitude more so.
But I am not challenging democracy here – it’s the best system going and like the scientific method is hopefully self-correcting. In Thomas Jefferson’s words:
“The mass of mankind under that (i.e. democracy), enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too; the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing.”
I do applaud the fact that people with demonstrated intellectual ability and accomplishment like Barack Obama and Ben Carson – a Law Professor and a Doctor respectively – are involved in presidential politics. Even brilliant, compassionate men like these can violently disagree. That just tells me that the universe is complex. Lawyers and Doctors though – don’t get me started…
So what we are witnessing now in our national government is in my opinion, the ascendance of binary thinking over reason and compromise. Both sides, Republican and Democrat have valid points of view. Compromise often takes the worst of both worlds rather then the best, so its not perfect either. In many cases, the best course is somewhere in between, taking the merits of both points of view and finding a solution that works for everyone. Or at least one that everyone can live with. I think that attempts to improve the ability of poor people to find employment – that they can live on – is one of these solutions. But like most, easy to say, hard to do. When successful it turns them from tax burdens to tax payers and is tremendously valuable for their own self-esteem and this empowers them to pass these values to their children.
The rigor mortis that we are observing in our government these days makes these sorts of advancements next to impossible. But who is to blame? The politicians or voters that are swayed by the pitch that “I will stand my ground, never waver from my beliefs and will just say ‘No’ to ‘them’”, are one of the main causes of this “ossification of our body politic” in my view. Moderates – the ones that used to make Congress work – are dropping like flies. But we did that, not them. They tell us what we want to hear – go figure: they are politicians. We vote. Sometimes – maybe most times – democracy is not pretty. We blame the government, but in the system brilliantly conceived by Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and Madison and most eloquently and succinctly articulated by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address – we are the government. So really, shame on us.
Another trend that we see is failure of civility. We see it in the Black Knight thread and countless other exchanges on the Internet. We see it in Ben Carson’s comments about evolution and evolutionists (the eminent evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins gets tons of hate mail), we see it every day on Fox News, MSNBC and C-Span and even on Facebook.
So let me set some ground rules for political debate if I could be so bold. One, lets argue ideas on their merits alone and avoid disparaging comments about the intelligence or motives of our opponents – even if we think they really are cretins or crooks – because even if they are, these assertions degenerate rather than enlighten the debate. Lets disagree – as the schlocky posters would say – without being disagreeable. I shouldn’t buy it from you because it’s a bad deal – whether or not I think that you are trying to rip me off. Two, lets not question each others’ patriotism – we are all in the same boat. I guess that this is what a person of reason would say, so I don’t expect to get too much traction here. Mud slinging is good theatre.
So while the philosophers and theologians have debated in this arena for hundreds of years, it continues to be relevant in our lives. Reason and belief are like oil and water – they don’t mix well – although some of us have achieved a kind of stable emulsion that enables these two things to coexist in our minds. That’s fine. I’m a big fan of intellectual freedom. But freedom as we say is not free – it has a price.
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